Obama and Catholics

Catholic League president Bill Donohue says relations between President Barack Obama and Catholics are at a critical juncture:

Exactly two weeks ago today, President Obama met with some Catholic journalists, telling them, “I don’t know any circumstances in which abortion is a happy circumstance or decision.” This begs the question: Why are his surrogates in the Democratic party pushing to make the public pay for a procedure that always makes women (and children) so unhappy? To be exact, over the past week, amendments to the health care reform bill sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch and Sen. Mike Enzi that would prohibit the public funding of abortion have gone down in defeat, all to the applause of the Obama administration. Something has got to give. If abortion is bad, then it makes no sense to subsidize it. After all, there is a reason why we don’t subsidize air or water pollution.

On that same day, the president pledged to support “robust” conscience-clause protections for health care workers. This was in keeping with the pledge he made at Notre Dame in May. “Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion,” he told the graduates, “and draft a sensible conscience clause….” This begs the question: Why are his surrogates in the Democratic party pushing to kill conscience rights? To be exact, yesterday the Democrats killed an amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn to provide conscience-rights protections for health care workers.

This is break point for Obama and Catholics. The president either means what he says when he talks to Catholics, or he doesn’t.

ditto…..he doesn’t. He probably turns an ear with the purported “liberal catholics”, but not with the “true” catholics. He is wasting good time and money that could be put toward getting this mess cleaned up.

SeanReynoldsNZ

What we Catholics need to do is to attempt to understand where the President is coming from, and what he means when he says he wants to minimise the number of abortions, and get his definitions of what a “sensible conscience clause” is. What you will find is that his ideas in general cannot be supported by Catholics.

In terms of minimising the number of abortions, his reasoning is probably similar to minimising the number of heart surgeries or knee operations carried out too. The President would probably tell you that he doesn’t like the idea of people requiring heart bypass operations, and wants that number of heart operations to fall, or that preventive medicine needs to be introduced to cut down the number of knee operations required. There is no moral problem to heart or knee surgery, but such operations are not to be desired. As far as your President is concerned, there is no moral problem with abortion. But just like if you have a heart problem you have a heart operation, if you have a pregnancy problem, you have a pregnancy removal operation. Ideally you deal with preventive medicine to stop the heart condition in the first place. You do the same with abortion by taking contraceptives. But if the preventive measures fail then you need to intervene with surgery.

His “sensible conscience clause” is probably similar to the laws passed in Victoria, Australia, in 2008. There if a doctor does not wish to provide abortion for reasons of conscience, then the doctor is required to send the pregnant woman to a doctor who will perform it. So that doctor will still have blood on their hands. By the way, if no one is available to do the abortion, then that doctor still has to do it. That is probably what will be introduced in the USA.

My point is that first of all, Obama is consistent when he says that he wants to cut down the number of abortions while making it more readily available. And his ideas are by no means compatible with the Catholic Faith. And his conscience ideas will remove the civil liberties of Catholic doctors.

Cooky642

If you listen consistently, you’ll hear him say one thing to one group and, a half-hour later, say the exact opposite to another group. Like other “relativists”, he has no concept whatever of Absolute Truth. Truth is whatever he says it is at the moment, conditioned on the desires of those listening to him, to gain more support in order to consolidate more power. If Mr. O. is God’s Judgement on the U.S., I think He couldn’t have done a more brilliant job!

DWC

Sean – nice piece. I agree. I also think and have said before … that his core beliefs probably stem from a feeling that abortion “helps” people of color economically — and minimizes fatherless blacks. Of course, I deny and abhor that …. but my gut tells me that is his cause. Note, I am not making racist statements .. but trying to put what I believe is his real issues on the table. Unfortunately, rather than deal with the other realities … the mother’s agony, the slaughter of new minds, the continual distuction of family, etc. They opt for the short term “fix”. My opinions only.

maryhelen

Obama is disingenuous in everything he says. He carefully crafts his speech so people hear what they want to hear, not the actual truth of what he intends to do.

My problem is: I do not understand why he is so popular in spite of the fact that his issues are not. Is it because the mainstream media is in the tank with him? Or are Americans too misinformed or too apathetic or too liberal to care about the future of America and the future of our children and grandchildren who will ultimately pay the price?

Edmond Burke’s saying to the effect that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing is very true. Let’s ALL get politically involved by voicing our opinions and our principles to our senators and representatives before it is too late, at least before they pass the Health “Reform” which is no reform at all. This health proposal will tax us to slaughter innocent babies in the womb, among other things. I have always been silent, but will remain silent no longer.

Obama is too much in a hurry to “reform” health care. This makes me suspicious of his plan’s provisions. He also plans to “redistribute” the wealth. This is too much like socialism, and if we want America to remain the most desirable country in which to live, we better step up to the plate now!

Does anyone else out there believe as I do?

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